*Sorcery vs. Witchcraft: Africa vs. Europe

Evans-Pritchard on the distinction between witchcraft and sorcery

 

Thomas: How this distinction applies to the Witchcraze period

 

Macfarlane: magical terminology and the witchcraze

*Evans-Pritchard’s distinction

Witchraft- inherent, evil power via occult, needs no spells or tools, not always deliberate

Sorcery- learned, evil power via overt methods, use of spells and tools, always deliberate

Witchcraft always malevolent; sorcery not necessarily so

*Evans-Pritchard: Witch Meetings

“Witches usually combine in their destructive activities and subsequent ghoulish feasts. They assist each other in crime and they arrange their various schemes in concert. They are believed to possess a special kind of ointment with which they rub their bodies and litle drums they beat to summon others to congress.” [314 (31)]

*Sorcery

Ngwa (medicine or magic): performance of magic with aid of rituals, and objects. Anyone can learn to perform it.

*Role of Witchcraft

Mangu is ubiquitous. It plays its part in every activity of Zande life…in domestic life of homesteads as well as in communal life of district and court; it is the essential theme of mental life, in which it forms the background of a vast panorama of magic; its influence is plainly stamped on law and morals; it is prominent in such different spheres as technology and language.” [315 (32)]

“If blight seizes the ground-nut crop it is mangu; if the bush is burnt vainly in pursuit of game, it is mangu; if women laboriously ladle out water from a pool and are rewarded by but a few small fish it is mangu;…if a wife shows herself unresponsive to her husband, it is mangu;… if, in fact, any failure or misfortune falls upon anyone at any time and in relation to any of the manifold activities of his life he believes that it is due to mangu. [315 (32)]

*Oracles

Iwa

 

Benge

*Witchcraft

Evans-Pritchard’s distinction:

 

Witchcraft: occult (hidden)

no rites, no spells, no tools

not always intentional, it can be involuntary

Sorcery

sorcery: deliberate, overt use of magic

uses rites, spells and tools

always intentional

sorcery is the maleficent use of magic

Only sorcery strictly speaking a crime

*English witchcraft

1653 definition of sorcery

“a thing or mischief which is distinct from witchcraft, as thus, witchcraft being performed by the devil’s insinuation of himself with witches… sorcery being performed by mere sophistication and wicked abuse of nature in things of nature’s own production, by sympathy and antipathy.” [319 (41)]

*Sorcery as intentional

sorcery distinguished also on basis of its being totally deliberate

 

that it is learned makes it seem more deliberate

Bacon: sorcery has less affinity with witchcraft because “not particular persons only (such as witches are) but anybody may do it.” [320(42)]

*Witchcraft a physical trait

physical traits marked off a witch

witches’ mark?

Could not cut a witches hair?

Leave no shadow?

“the body of a witch being burnt, her blood is prevented thereby from becoming hereditary to her progeny in the same evil, which by hanging is not.”(1652) [320 (42)]

*Fact of malignity more important

English focused more on the evil intent, rather than the way it was implemented

During trial period, witchcraft was associated with evil and that did imply overt or tacit consent to do evil things

 

suggest that we look further back, to the pre-trial period

*Macfarlane

For Azande, though end similar means are different

 

For English, no static definition of ‘witch’

 

elite vs. vulgar conception

*Many faces of witchcraft

Witchcraft could be good or bad

it was necessary for the performance of rituals or spells

“none is said to perform the matter, except she be a witch.”(Scot, 1584) [321 (45)]

vulgar conceptions saw witchcraft as inherent and necessary for any type of magic

elite, as we know, classified it as an intentional, evil state

*Competing conceptions

punish all witches, it is an essentially evil means

punish only those who intend evil ends